Digital Construction Works Launches

Topcon Positioning Group and Bentley Systems formed a new company called Digital Construction Works (DCW) in October.

Ted Lamboo, DCW CEO, formerly senior vice president of international operations, president of Bentley Asia/Pacific, and COO Jason Hallet, formerly  a vice president for Topcon, plus Tom Dengenis, former chief executive for SYNCHRO, now Principle Research Officer of the newly minted Digital Construction Works make up the DCW leadership team.

Topcon has partnered with Bentley for many years, but DCW is a separate services company offering digital automation, integration and digital twinning services and fit-for-purpose solutions. The aim is to simplify digital transformation for the construction industry. DCW solutions span every phase of the project – from planning to construction and operations through to asset management – creating a digital thread that connects technologies and workflows. Because DCW is a completely new separate company, it can be agnostic to technology and process improvement. This way, technology follows the operational process change but doesn’t lead it.

In an interview with Ted Lamboo, he spoke about the new venture. The construction industry contributes 13 percent of global GDP and an estimated $12.9 trillion market by 2022, and is the largest industry in the world, positioned to benefit from significant value through productivity improvements.

“Vendors live in their own oyster of developing technology,” said Lamboo. “Of course, we do research and have an opinion about what’s good for the user. Even if that’s been researched, it is governed by how to apply it to their projects.”

The services aspect of DCW aims to service users in making that step in adoption.  “We can help them in the first couple of steps and we can help them do it themselves or educate them how to do it themselves. We can do the integration into their existing environment. If we can educate the marketplace and get everyone to adopt the technology, the savings that are possible in the construction industry are going to be great.”

Customers will say that they see the advantages of a technology, but want time to figure it out and get it implemented into their organization. How can we get in there? Can you help us do that part of it? Generally customers don’t have time to take from their busy schedules to assemble the people and the technologies for either mid-stream projects or starting something new.

“The lowest common denominator is stick to everything you’re comfortable with, stick to your work processes and you don’t advance the industry,” said Lamboo. “If you want to advance it you have to start doing things you haven’t done before and that’s scary.”

DCW can provide hand holding. “The user may say I know how to manage my construction site but I haven’t got the expertise to build digital twins or to maintain digital twins, so if you service my digital twins I will apply it to my work processes,” said Lamboo. “They may outsource the digital twinning to us as a service. They also may say we already have the people to do the data collection and the drones but, when we need the data to be integrated with our maintenance system, with our financial system, Primavera, or other tools. How do we integrate with my existing environment? We help them integrate them.”

DCW has two Labs, a digital twin lab and a system integration lab. In the Labs, DCW can prove to the user how they are going to apply the technology at their site.  This way the user will come with their circumstances, asking for a test environment and a customization environment so they don’t have to risk the work that is ongoing at their site until they know the solution works the way they want it to work.

“We can build data reports for them, we can show how it integrates with a particular tool they have, we can figure it out,” said Lamboo. “And if there are gaps between the tools they’re using we can actually build connectors between those gaps. We can take their data and pull out dashboards and analytics so they can get more transparent.

Once a project starts even if it lasts five years ago, project owners are very hesitant to change their toolsets mid project. So this whole configuration of what I’m using and what am I going to live with for this next period is very important. We create a simple analogy that everyone understands.”

For too long the world has seen design as a single deliverable that is delivered as a design file by the architect and another one from the civil engineer. The builder must then decompose it into constructible steps. Since construction takes a long time and materials change, vendors change, circumstances change, change management on the job needs to be seen differently. Rather than a static process, it must be managed over time.

The importance of 4D, the element of time, is that change will need to be managed. Digital twins will need to be continually managed and updated.

“The beauty of federation of data (adding new information) is that geometry may be relatively stable but the material used behind it, or the financial report, might update itself every day, or if you have five systems it can federate the data that way. Not every element has to update itself at the same frequency. It depends on the data source. Like the temperature of the pump, you get the data every so many seconds or every minute.”

It may be enough to update materials once per week. Lamboo cites Google as an example of federating data. “You type in your question and it will google it away and index it and figure out what data resides where. So this automation is the automation of how to bring data together. With autonomous vehicles they went and mapped the entire whole world so the vehicles could be aware of what’s there and position themselves in real time.”

The exact opposite problem exists in construction, as you must design with the idea of how you are going to manufacture and construct. “Because of the constant changing form of the construction environment you need for all the people technology and processes to work harmoniously,” said Lamboo. “You need all the data you can get coming in in real time if possible to actually arrive at the automation for construction.”

Both Topcon and Bentley have a long history in infrastructure for transportation, plants, buildings, hospitals, airports and cities which is a complex environment. “The owner doesn’t really own the city, and may only own a small portion of the infrastructure,” Lamboo pointed out. “They don’t own the airport, or the metro or utility but it all comes together in the city.”

Unlike companies, governments or departments of transportation or universities must write laws and set standards because they have influencers on their infrastructure while they don’t own it.

“We’re seeing clear advantages to doing preliminary surveys and mapping of the infrastructure and doing the 3D modeling for below or above ground existing infrastructure, and having that as a foundation to start with,” said Lamboo. “When you move into connectors you’re starting from a foundation and save time because you’re not running into infrastructure that was unknown. But you also have much more rich data. The more you do that; you will eventually have it updating the pieces all the time. We’re describing the city as a systems of systems.”

In looking at digital cities, the development of the infrastructure may not all be at the same level at the same time. In some cities the transportation part is the most important part, in some other it may be pollution, or energy, and the management of it.

Lamboo remarked. “Politicians have four year terms. A lot happens in four years but someone else takes over and then they have different priorities. You are asking the public to buy in to a public project that won’t be supported after four years. Managers of cities are not chosen for their knowledge of the infrastructure. If Shell hires someone to run a petrochemical plant they get someone with the qualifications.”

To perpetuate the ecosystems, Lamboo suggested that it would be best to work on the critical parts of infrastructure like utilities. “We’re connecting everything from the design to the people to the processes to time and location,” Lamboo summed up. “You can elevate awareness, transparency and the ability to actually gain operational efficiencies. Those are the critical things to focus on.”

Tags: 3D, 3D cities, AEC, architects, architecture, Bentley Systems, BIM, building, building design, building information modeling, CAD, collaboration, construction, DCW, design, Digital Construction Works, engineering, engineers, generative design, GIS, infrastructure, laser scanning, Open BIM, visualization, Year In Infrastructure 2019

Categories: 2D, 3D, 3D PDF, 3D printing, AEC, AEC training, AECCafe, apps, Bentley Systems, BIM, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, construction project management, data archiving, drones, IES, IFC, infrastructure, integrated project delivery, lidar, managed services, mobile, mobile printing, project management, reality capture, simulation, site planning, sustainable design, terrain, traffic simulation, UAV, video surveillance, virtual reality, visualization

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